Johnny Depp finds nothing but smooth sailing with Japanese fans of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’

by George Hadley-GarciaSpecial To The Japan TimesJul 4, 2017

HOLLYWOOD – While the return of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise has gotten mixed reviews from critics overseas, it’s bound to be a hit in Japan for two reasons: Johnny Depp and Paul McCartney.

Depp plays the series’ hero, Captain Jack Sparrow, and McCartney is playing his uncle.

“As a big music fan, I was thrilled we got Paul McCartney aboard as my Uncle Jack,” Depp tells The Japan Times. “He looked the part and was so into it. It was almost like two kids playing. I didn’t even feel like he was older than me, or an ex-Beatle — I mean talk about awesome.”

The Beatles had a phenomenal impact on Japanese music fans when they toured here in 1966, and their presence has been felt in everything from commercials to English lessons by JET teachers since. One of the only actors to approach their level of fame? Depp. He’s so popular in Japan that he doesn’t even need to visit to feel the love.

“A few years ago in France, a Japanese tour group was staring and smiling at me,” the 54-year-old Depp recalls. “I smiled back, then a lady covered one eye with her hand, like an eye patch, and of course I knew what they were referencing.

“Then a young guy comes forward a bit, so I stretch out my hand so we can shake and he asks, ‘When is the next “Pirates” movie?’ I had to shrug, and at first he looked disappointed. Then his face lights up and he says, ‘I think next “Pirates” movie should be rated Aaarrrgh!’ like in that way pirates have of saying ‘yes.’ It was so funny, I burst out laughing, and soon everyone was laughing.”

Luckily for that fan, the franchise hadn’t yet walked the plank. This past weekend saw the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” (Japan title: “Pairetsu obu Karibian: Saigo no Kaizoku”), the fifth installment in the film franchise that launched in 2003 with “The Curse of the Black Pearl.” It has been six years since the fourth chapter, “On Stranger Tides,” was out in cinemas. The weekend box office in Japan was around $9.2 million, bringing the film’s global take to more than $708 million.

“It does take more grease to get you back into the frying pan,” Depp says about his return. “I don’t mean money, I mean a worthwhile script and new elements. And reintroduced elements.”

Something old and something new? He’s likely referring to the return of Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Will (Orlando Bloom), who were absent from the previous film, and new baddie Captain Salazar, played by Javier Bardem.

“Isn’t Javier terrific? He’s such a cool guy, really nice, but he’s such a rotten bastard on screen — and he can retain his devilish charm,” Depp says. “He was one of the best ‘Bond’ villains.”

Speaking of villains, Depp got his start in acting with one of the most famous in cinematic history — he was the third-ever victim of Freddy Krueger, the razor-clawed monster from 1984’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” From there, Depp honed his cool factor on the TV show “21 Jump Street” before playing iconic roles in “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005) and “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” (2007), to name but a few.

“Just to transition from television to movies is something. I’m grateful I’m one of a few who’s managed it, and it’s been a long run,” Depp says. “Like to some degree that’s owed to Captain Jack and company. There’s a big, enthusiastic market for these movies. As action movies go, I think they maintain a higher level of quality than most action franchises.”

Japan’s not the only foreign market on Hollywood’s radar these days: what Chinese audiences think is definitely growing in importance. Depp is grateful for the interest, but notes that while the country’s influence increases, he hopes it won’t impose conditions on film content and casting. He briefly cites the example of Buddhist actor Richard Gere, a friend of the Dalai Lama and critic of China’s occupation of Tibet, before switching the topic back to Japan.

“It just occurs to me that one reason Japanese, but also British, fans are so fond of the ‘Pirates’ movies is they’re island nations, right? The sea is part of their history … and their background — literally,” he says. “I wonder if landlocked countries like Switzerland have the same feeling for pirate movies. Hmm. I’m pretty sure there must have been Japanese pirates, come to think of it.”

The pirates that wreaked havoc on the seas surrounding Japan were known as wakō and were particularly active around 1350. Depp thinks adding one or two of them to the franchise, if there’s a sixth installment, would be “really cool.”

Speaking of new kinds of roles, Depp says that, having performed as so many different types of characters, it’s hard to think what’s left for him to do.

“Just when you think there aren’t any (new roles), along comes some interesting off-the-wall script or a new young director with a brand-new vision,” he assures me. “But what I’d really like is for one of my movies — where I’m not Jack Sparrow — to be a really big hit. Then I’d know it was really, and especially, just because of me.”

He pauses for a moment and adds, “I wonder if I should have said that, it sounds pretty vain.” Depp says that one thing he loves about being an actor is the ability to go all-out in embracing a personality that’s outside of his own.

“I think everyone gets bored with himself now and then,” he says, adding that he loves dressing up in costumes. “I think it’s a compliment when, like with ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ some people come up to me and say they didn’t recognize me in it at first. That means I’m really doing my job.”

“Just when you think there aren’t any (new roles), along comes some interesting off-the-wall script or a new young director with a brand-new vision,” he assures me. “But what I’d really like is for one of my movies — where I’m not Jack Sparrow — to be a really big hit. Then I’d know it was really, and especially, just because of me.”

He pauses for a moment and adds, “I wonder if I should have said that, it sounds pretty vain.” Depp says that one thing he loves about being an actor is the ability to go all-out in embracing a personality that’s outside of his own.

“I think everyone gets bored with himself now and then,” he says, adding that he loves dressing up in costumes. “I think it’s a compliment when, like with ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ some people come up to me and say they didn’t recognize me in it at first. That means I’m really doing my job.”

Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer behind the multi-billion Dollar Pirates of The Caribbean franchise, was speaking to Metro.co.uk ahead of the Home Entertainment release of Pirates of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge, where he revealed that the Hollywood star is always prepared to bring Jack out to play.

The film is Depp’s fifth performance as Captain Jack Sparrow, this time up against Javier Bardem as the ghostly Captain Salazar. It’s a role that transformed Depp’s career almost 15 years ago, where the role took him from cult film favourite to bona fide worldwide megastar.

‘This is a character he loves,’ Bruckheimer revealed.

‘I don’t know if you saw the news recently in the last couple of weeks he’s filming in Vancouver, so he put on his Captain Jack outfit and visited the children’s hospital for terminally ill kids, and he comes back over and over again. He carries that costume everywhere, he’s done it in England he’s gone to some of your hospitals there and entertained kids, so it’s a thing he really loves.’

The blockbuster, which made almost $800 million (£602 million) worldwide, also required Depp to be digitally ‘de-aged’ in a scene which explored Jack Sparrow’s early years.

‘It was hard, but the results are phenomenal,’ Bruckheimer explains of the process, which was also used on Robert Downey Jr in Captain America: Civil War.

‘You can do just about anything on film right now. Whatever your mind can imagine, we can deliver.’

The film also surprised fans with a cameo from Sir Paul McCartney, playing Captain Jack’s Uncle.

According to Bruckheimer, the music icon’s appearance was also down to Depp’s connections, and the absence of another rock god.

‘Johnny and Paul are friends,’ he says.

‘Keith Richards, who we’ve had (appear) a number of times, was on tour and we couldn’t get him to come back when we were filming, so Johnny called Paul and said “Look I’ve got a little role if you’re interested in doing it,” and he said “sure,” so we sent him the pages and he loved it. We did hair and make up on him and he had a blast doing that with Johnny, and he had a great time shooting.’

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge is available on Blu-ray & DVD October 2.

Box Office: Disney Doesn't Need Johnny Depp For 'Pirates Of The Caribbean 6'Scott Mendelson , CONTRIBUTOR I cover the film industry. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales came out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, after a rather robust theatrical run. Sure, the film made less than the previous $963 million-$1 billion+ grossing sequels, but the Walt Disney pirate adventure still made $794m worldwide. It is also, for what it’s worth, the highest-grossing live-action movie ever to not top $200m in North America, making $172m in North America (compared to $240m for On Stranger Tides in 2011). So, the question becomes whether or not Disney should quit while they are ahead or take a shot at another installment. The risks are obvious, as a continuing downturn (at budgetary levels) will eventually create a situation where a Pirates film loses money. But there exists a couple of ways to potentially prolong the franchise if Disney chooses.

First and foremost, they need to get back to the root of the series. While Captain Jack Sparrow was the breakout character in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, he was not the outright lead. He was the Han Solo to Will Turner’s Luke Skywalker and Elizabeth Swann’s Princess Leia. But the twist, in the first movie and (to a lesser extent) the first two sequels, is that the film was essentially Elizabeth’s journey. She is the first character we meet onscreen, and the trilogy’s overreaching arc is that of Keira Knightley’s protagonist, a governor’s daughter born into privilege, who wants to be a pirate but then realizes up close that an actual pirate’s life is filled with moral compromises and terrible consequences.

By At World’s End, Elizabeth has her own pirate ship and is “King of the Pirates.” But she has lost both her father (Jonathan Pryce) and her would-be betrothed (Jack Davenport) who sacrificed himself to save her party. By the journey’s end, the pirates have defeated the murderous British government, but Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) has essentially perished, doomed to become the new captain of the Flying Dutchman and leaving his new wife alone with their unborn son. We can debate to what extent the films succeeded in making this the core arc of the movies (Swann spends much of the first film in damsel-in-distress mode), but Pirates of the Caribbean began as a high-seas riff on Star Wars, it morphed into a grimmer, Rogue One-type mythology.

Even as Johnny Depp’s crowd-pleasing Jack Sparrow became the main draw, Gore Verbinski tried not to let him take over the movies. It is Swann who we see first in both Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest, as the latter climaxes with Swann embracing her pirate destiny by murdering Sparrow in order to help her fellow mates escape the Kraken. Yes, he would come back, but not for the first third of At World’s End, and if anything the film works so well without him that he should have stayed dead. I’ve argued the same for Han Solo in Return of the Jedi. Depp's buffoonery clashes with the grim tone for a movie that opens with the British government hanging a child.

If Walt Disney wants to make a sixth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, just craft another adventure that puts Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Swann in a starring role. She is only 32-years-old, which is just two years older than Orlando Bloom was when he made At World’s End (and eight years younger than Johnny Depp when he first played Sparrow in Curse of the Black Pearl). With all the action in Hollywood in terms of gender-swapping old properties, this one would be a pretty easy situation, since you already have an established property, a marquee supporting character in Depp’s Sparrow and an established female lead in Knightley’s Swann who could easily take center stage in an even more dramatic form.

Heck, if you really want to spice things up and have your cake and eat it too, you can make Jack Sparrow the villain this time out. No, not “he’s being blackmailed into betraying his family,” and no, not “he’s been brainwashed to believe that he needs to destroy our world to save his.” I mean, he’s the actual antagonist who actually embraces his villainy after all these years. That A) throws a major twist into the franchise and B) offers a reasonable way to keep Sparrow in the picture without again making him the goofball screw up. And if you want to close the book on the franchise (or at least this arc) by killing Sparrow, then that’ll make the movie one hell of an event.

But, I would argue that with Knightley and Bloom back in the driver’s seat, and a somewhat cheaper production budget, there is some value in testing the waters in a Depp-free installment. And, here’s the thing: Disney can afford to fail. It’s a strange dichotomy. The same franchise-rich safety that makes a sixth Pirates entirely unnecessary is also the relative safety that allows Disney to roll the dice on it. If we get a Pirates 6 in 2020 and it does poorly, like Transformers: The Last Knight numbers, the Mouse House will still have plenty of other big hits to buffer the loss. And if it scores, well, that’s another notch in the belt. It’s the same situation that Universal now faces with its “Dark Universe," as (while I was writing this) they just shut down pre-production on Javier Bardem and Angelina Jolie's The Bride of Frankenstein.

Yes, The Mummy was an artistic disaster and limped to $408 million worldwide almost entirely on Tom Cruise’s star power. But if we still get Bill Condon’s The Bride of Frankenstein in 2020 or later, it’ll be protected by the likes of Fast and Furious 9 and Minions 2. And that’s not even counting if we get a fast-tracked Dwayne Johnson/Jason Statham Fast and Furious spinoff to replace the FF9 that just moved to April of 2020. The Dark Universe isn’t in great shape, but it’s not remotely a do-or-die franchise for Universal. They can cancel it (or make Bride entirely stand-alone and/or make it an outright R-rated horror movie) or they can roll the dice precisely because they don’t need it.

Walt Disney is in the same boat with Pirates, a series that is much more successful than (for example, in terms of will they/won’t they sequels) Tron: Legacy or Pacific Rim ever was. The funny thing is, in any other situation, we’d absolutely be getting a sequel to a movie that earned $794 million worldwide, no matter the critical response. Heck, Disney just hired one of the Pirates 5 directors to helm Maleficent 2, over three years after that Angelina Jolie fantasy snagged $759m worldwide. So it will be interesting to see if Dead Men Tell No Tales is really the end of the line.

Universal/Comcast Corp. and Walt Disney are in similar envious positions right now, in that they can choose to continue or end their franchises precisely because they have enough other biggies that those properties are not essential to their survival. I might argue that Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. is in the same boat with the LEGO movies after LEGO Movie 2. Has Jack Sparrow sunk his last ship? Will the Dark Universe live long enough to get its proverbial Wonder Woman? Or maybe Universal can just arbitrarily designate Glass as the next chapter in the Dark Universe. I’ve been begging them to slap the Illumination label on the next batch of Laika movies for a year now. This story is most certainly to be continued.

One thing he glosses over...Orlando Bloom has no ability to make you interested in a film with him as the lead. They tried to make him a star after the first POTC, giving him a couple big movies...they all bombed and they quietly shuffled him off to Buffalo. Keira turned her nose up at further Pirate films, after the first three. She went off to make art films that few people saw. She might be interested again. Honestly, I hope Johnny is through with POTC. The films have damaged his ability to be thought of as a top actor. I'd love to see him step back and choose other types of films. I'm old enough to remember when young actors would say they wanted a career like Johnny Depp. I miss the respect.

Hang on - I think he still garners a lot of respect in Hollywood due to his sheer talent and the fact that everyone who works with him speaks so highly of his professionalism (and how nice/decent/fun he is). I'm trying to think of a single person who has worked with him and gone on record and been critical. Everyone who knows him (except one person and her small group of cohorts) speaks incredibly warmly of him.

Pirates is almost separate to everything else he does. And that in itself gets Hollywood respect down to its huge success.

Personally I would like to see Pirates go on as the writer suggests at one point, with the focus on other characters and Captain Jack coming in as a disruptive figure. I thought Johnny put it so well in the interview on Japanese TV recently when he said Captain Jack perturbs people. To me that's when the character works best, when he is causing a bit of chaos rather than the story arc running through him.

The writer has an interesting theory about Elizabeth Swann's story arc being the center of the first movies. There are some valid points in the piece. However, I don't think Pirates would ever work without Captain Jack Sparrow in some capacity. We tend to be a little biased here at the Zone, but I believe Johnny is vital to the success of the franchise.

The most noteworthy thing I took from that piece was the bit about The Mummy apparently being so blah that the plug was pulled on Javier Bardem's Frankenstien, which means this whole Dark Universe series could be out the window. (Weird the writer didn't mention Invisible Man in an article that talks about both Johnny and Dark Universe). I find that kind of funny that a Tom Cruise movie meant to begin a franchise of sorts was so bad that the franchise is stopped cold. It's refreshing to hear after listening to the decidedly anti-Johnny Vulture hack David Edelstein singing the praises of Cruise' latest movie at the end of a recent Fresh Air. (It really bothers me that someone so biased against Johnny is given a regular spotlight on Fresh Air. I'd like to have a chat with Teri Gross about that.)I really like the latest Pirates, but as for future installments, I just don't know. I don't think Johnny will ever play Jack as a "pure villain", it's just not Jack's personality. I noticed after buying the blu-ray that P5 is still referred to as "the final adventure", minus the "begins" part...

"I feel I am good sitting on a beach with a breeze going by, the waves hitting the beach." "I've got a lot of Barbies in storage...""The Mad Hatter is the Mad Hatter. What am I going to do, play him like Lee Majors?"

A little off topic perhaps, but I find this line from Edelstein's Pirates 5 review creepy and sexist: "Kaya Scodelario is both lovely and goofy. (Her long face recalls Nicole Kidman’s, her pert chin Meg Ryan’s.)"

I sometimes wonder how things might have been had Johnny only done the first Pirates, had won an Oscar (rightly deserved) and then moved on. I’ve always loved Jack so I am not the most objective commentator on this, but I can understand why some people have tired of Pirates and feel enough is enough. It’s a law of diminishing returns, I’ve enjoyed 5 as being a fun movie and a chance to revisit favourite characters, but it’s not on a par with the earlier ones in my view. I would hate to see Jack played as pure villain, the fun of his character has always been that Johnny plays him with a wink and a nod - you can never really decide if he is at heart a good man or a bad one. I actually really liked Pirates 4, as the focus was more on the mature characters and (for me) it was fun to see Jack’s interaction with Angelica. I really do think they will be stretching it to go for a sixth film.

It seems like the writer is a Keira fan who wants a whole movie to be about Elizabeth. In this he is in line with Ted and Terry who always said it was Will and Elizabeth’s story, not Jack’s, in fact I always got the impression they almost resented Johnny for stealing the show. But for me Will and Elizabeth were always more like necessary wallpaper, I always found the more mature and nuanced characters far more interesting. Geoffrey Rush has been so brilliant as Barbossa for example.

"Easy on the goods darlin!""Tis not an easy thing to be entirely happy, but to be kind is very easy, and that is the greatest measure of happiness"-John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester